Getting Acquainted, Part II: Porch Talk
by Sevenstars
Summary: Having tried to explain Jess to Daisy without betraying confidences, Slim now has to make Jess see why it was necessary.


**Getting Acquainted, Part II: Porch Talk**

 _by Sevenstars_

SUMMARY: Slim has some explaining to do. Comes immediately after "Getting Acquainted;" if you don't read that first, it won't make sense. Thanks to Katy for the quick beta of both.

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The distinctive aroma of Bull Durham, floating through the open sitting-room window, caught Slim's attention as he came in from putting the kitchen stove to bed. He leaned across the leather couch and made out the steady glowing and dimming of the cigarette's red eye, and then the dark shape of the man smoking it. Not that he didn't know who was out there; it certainly wasn't Deever, who wouldn't be getting out of bed for a while.

He reached for the doorknob and turned it quickly enough to make the latch snap as it drew in; even after two years, Jess had a way of startling—and going for his gun, though at least he hadn't been wearing it at the table—if he thought somebody was sneaking up on him. "Thought you gave that up," he said as he crossed the threshold.

"Did," said Jess, still sucking on his smoke. "Just… been a loco kinda day, y'know? Couldn't have a drink, so I reckoned maybe the tobacco'd calm me down some."

"Would have thought that bellyful of good cooking would help there," Slim observed. "Like you said, best you've had in more than a year."

"She sure is some fine cook, ain't she?" said Jess, diverted. "Not that I ain't kinda sorry Sally didn't work out…"

"I'm not at all sure Judge Henry would have had as good an opinion of her as he did of Miss Daisy," Slim replied, and waited for Jess to make the connection.

"You mean… maybe he wouldn't'a' let Mike stay with us?"

"Maybe," Slim agreed. He waited again. He didn't think there'd have been any rivalry between the two of them—Sally had her points, loyalty first among them, but she wasn't his type. Still, with Jess and women, you were never quite sure.

"I wouldn't'a' wanted that." There was a faintly grim note under the words, and Slim guessed what his friend was going to say before he heard what came next. "I made his folks a promise. I'd'a' had to keep it, Slim. Even if it meant me and Mike goin' away."

"Would you have done that?"

"Wouldn't'a' wanted to," Jess admitted. "But a word given… a man can't back out of that. Not even if the folks he gives it to ain't here no more."

"And if I'd gone along?"

That brought Jess around to face him, sharp and quick. "You? Leave this place, leave your folks' graves, everything you've worked for all these years?"

Slim shrugged. "A place is a place. I could have built another," _with you to help me_. "A family…"

Jess was silent for a long time. "Then I'm plumb glad it didn't come to that," he said at last.

"So am I."

They said nothing for a few minutes. Jess finished his cigarette and flipped it out onto the hard surface of the yard; a shower of tiny sparks like a comet's tail followed it, tracing its trajectory before it hit the ground.

"I'm thinking," said Slim then, "maybe we ought to manure the truck patch, start getting it ready to be planted again. I've got a notion Miss Daisy'll want to get a garden going."

"That'd be good," said Jess. "Cheaper'n swappin' beef, anyhow. Kinda late in the season though, ain't it? Reckon she can get anything worth the havin'?" His own mother had raised garden truck, but it had been a good many years since he'd had anything to do with the process.

"I figure she can manage corn, beans, squash, maybe tomatoes, maybe some peas and onions, probably some Scarlet Nantes carrots if she can find the seed. Cabbage too, if there's Early Jersey Wakefield to be had, that can be ready in sixty days if the weather goes along. Radishes for sure—it's late to start 'em, but they don't take any time at all getting big enough to pick. Not potatoes, likely, but those we can always buy in town."

Jess made a little sound, not quite a grunt, that indicated he supposed Slim knew what he was talking about. "Fresh corn… that'd be right nice. Roastin' ears… ear-corn…"

He was obviously remembering the corn he'd eaten as a boy in Texas. That led Slim to the recollection of all the things he and Daisy had discussed while Mike and the ex-gunslinger were finishing up the barn chores. "Jess—"

Some note in the word woke Jess's instincts; Slim couldn't make out his face well in the darkness, but he could feel the hot brightness of the blue eyes on him. "What?"

"Jess… I did something you might not like, but… I felt I had to. Like when you and Stuart went off after Bannister and I told Andy and Jonesy why. I… Miss Daisy's not like most of the women around here, not like Lillian McCaskey or Mrs. Bates or even Sally. She doesn't know the way things work. She doesn't—didn't—know about… well, bounty hunters, and gunfighters, and—" He took a deep breath. "I had to tell her some things about you. About what you used to do, and about your nightmares, and what happened out in the yard today. I had to give her the chance to see what she's come to, to decide to go back if she felt she couldn't deal with it all." _You know I don't lie to you. I try not even to keep things from you, if they're things you have a right to know. I knew from the start that you'd have to be told what I did._

There was a long silence. Then Jess said, "What'd she say?"

It took Slim a moment to define the tone under the words. It wasn't anger, or disappointment at a confidence betrayed. It was doubt, uncertainty—the same he'd heard when the Texan was struggling with the necessity of having killed Dixie Howard, with all that had meant to him, with what Howard had done. _Slim, how many times has this happened now? Close on two years and my past keeps on catchin' up to me—to us. It ain't gonna stop, Slim. And it ain't just about me, or you. What if Andy had still been here, or Jonesy? And what about Kelly—or Mose; he could'a' been hurt too, or killed… A man shouldn't... shouldn't be askin' people he... cares about... to put themselves in harm's way for his sake. It ain't fair, and it ain't right. He's got to ride his own broncs. Ain't nobody else can ride 'em for him…_

"She couldn't believe you were capable of it, not at first," said Slim _._ "She seems to have had a very high opinion of the two of us, right from the start. And then she… was sorry to hear you'd gone through the kinds of things that could make you what you—were."

"What I _am,"_ said Jess, very softly. Slim could almost hear what he was thinking, something that happened sometimes when Jess was deep in memories or trying to cope with yet another reminder of the life he'd been trying to give up for so long: _It ain't no good, it never was… she won't stay… or I'll have to go… she'll think I'm—what would a lady from back East think about somebody who's done what I've done? A savage… a murderer… she'll never understand…_

"Jess." Carefully, Slim extended a hand and laid it against the Texan's arm. "It's not what you think."

Jess didn't flinch away, but the heavy note in his reply explained that. "She's scairt of me now. Or she reckons I'll be a bad influence on Mike. Or she pities me."

" _No,_ Jess. Nothing like that—like any of that. I don't say she understands, not entirely. She can't, unless you decide—and it has to be your choice; I didn't give her any of the details—that you want her to know exactly what happened with the Bannisters, or about Dixie Howard, or the war, or the—the jobs you've had. But she _wants_ to understand. She wants to help. She said—" he took a moment to recollect Daisy's exact words— " 'Women have their pride too, you know. We don't like to be charity cases, and we like to feel useful.' And, 'I'm sure I want to give myself a chance.' And that she had to stay—for Mike's sake, and yours, and mine." He hesitated a moment, wondering if he should repeat the very first thing she'd said, and then decided that—having gone this far—he had to. "She said—'You mean that handsome young man with the lovely smile and the Southern gallantry _killed_ a man?' As if she already knew—the way I know—what you are inside. As if she knew that that was what mattered."

Another long silence as Jess tried to work his way through what this might mean. "She wants to stay?"

"She wants to stay," Slim agreed firmly. "She's not afraid. And it's not that she doesn't know that there's danger, or might be. Sally told me… when she was working over Deever, she said—she said she'd worked in a hospital during the war. She didn't say what kind of hospital, but it's not beyond possibility that it was pretty close to the front. Maybe you've heard about Clara Barton? She got permission from Major-General Rucker himself—he was second in command of the Union Quartermaster branch—to work on the front lines. She spent three years distributing stores, cleaning field hospitals, applying dressings, and serving food to wounded soldiers in close proximity to several battles. She was at Cedar Mountain, Second Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg. Once a bullet tore through the sleeve of her dress without strikin' her and killed a man she was tending. I somehow have the feeling that Miss Daisy might have been in similar situations." And before Jess could respond: "I'm not sure she realizes that I caught it, but she mentioned a son… I think—from the way she spoke of him—that he's dead. I think… Jess, I think she _needs_ to be in a place like this, where she has young men around her to take care of." _And I think you need her just as much,_ he added silently. _Andy and Jonesy and I—we could be your brothers and your uncle, but not your mother._

Hesitation. "You ain't foolin' me?"

"I would never try to fool you about something like this, Jess. About something that touches on everything you've been and everything I know you have the potential to be. Everything you've been to me and Andy—and Mike now." _Sometimes,_ he thought, _you just need a little push in the right direction—and I think she supplied that, if you only knew. Which you're just about to._ "She said, 'You'll be here, and Jess. I can't see either of you letting anything happen to me or to Mike.' "

He heard the ripple of indrawn breath through his friend's nostrils, like the sound a horse makes sometimes when it's getting a good scent of you. "She said that? For real?"

"For real."

When Jess spoke again, there was a quiet warmth in his words. "That's like Andy, ain't it? Or like Mike."

"Well… not quite. She's not a young boy." Slim waited, but he already knew the battle was won. _You would never have abandoned Andy, no matter what you sometimes thought—like the time you went to Utah and I followed you. You would never abandon Mike. They need you and trust you. And so do I. And so does she._

"Gonna be… strange," said Jess, very softly, "livin' in the same house with a woman again."

"You were willing enough to try it, once we realized we needed a housekeeper," Slim reminded him.

"Reckon I was," Jess admitted. "Never rightly thought on gettin' one like her, though. Never reckoned…" Another of those long, thoughtful intervals. "Maybe…"

"Maybe what?"

Jess shook his head. "No matter." He looked up. "Reckon we best teach her how to use Jonesy's old shotgun?"

Slim chuckled. "If we put a full load in it, it'll knock her flat. But birdshot, maybe. And you need to tell her about rattlesnakes. And poison oak, I doubt she'd know it if she saw it."

"You still got that old Paterson you had when you was a kid on the drives?" Jess asked, out of nowhere.

"Absolutely. It's in a trunk, up in the attic. Why?"

" 'S only a .36," Jess reminded him. "Light powder charge. We could get it converted so's it don't chainfire—might be easier for her to handle. Easier to hide behind her skirts if it come to that. Be enough, if she got close to what needed shootin'. Or who."

"Are you volunteering to teach her to shoot it?" Slim asked, unable to stop the grin that came with the picture of the Texan giving a white-haired Eastern lady gunfighting lessons.

"Dixie always said, get the best," said Jess. It was the first time he'd mentioned his old mentor by name since the day the man died.

 _The best,_ Slim thought. _The best friend a man ever had. I hoped that would be enough to make up for… not quite betraying you, but I wasn't sure you'd see it that way._ "Speakin' of the best," he said, "it's getting late, and we've got work tomorrow. And a housekeeper to start breakin' in. I think it's best—I think it's well past time—we were in bed; everybody else is."

"Reckon so," Jess agreed. And then: "Slim?"

"Yeah?"

"You said… it was like when I went with Trim," Jess remembered. It took a moment for Slim to switch tracks of thought and understand the reference. "You was right. She had a right to know, same's they done."

"Not offended, then?"

" 'Course not."

"That's good."

"You bet."

-30-


End file.
